Vogel, Wolfgang (ca. 1500-1527)

Wolfgang Vogel (ca. 1500-1527), an Anabaptist martyr, born in Reutlingen, Swabia; he joined the reform movement of Nürnberg at an early age. Around 1523-24 there was in this city a group of "evan­gelical-minded men" who found themselves in open conflict with the budding Lutheran movement. The poet Hans Sachs is said to have belonged to this group, and Vogel apparently shared its "radical" outlook. In 1524 as pastor in Bopfingen and in 1525 as pastor in Eltersdorf, he tried to introduce the Reformation. In early 1526 he also became acquaint­ed with Hans Hut, who was then a bookseller in Nürnberg, and it is probable that Hut won him for the new, still more radical ideas of Anabaptism.

Hearing that Bopfingen had dismissed his suc­cessor (a like-minded preacher), Vogel addressed a missive to the citizens of that city, called Tröstlicher Sendbrief und christliche Ermahnung zum Evan­gelio, an den ehrbaren Rat und die ganze Gemeinde zu Bopfingen (1526), a pamphlet, printed without naming the printer or the place of publication (to­day only two copies of it are known: one in the Mennonite library at Amsterdam, and the other in the archives of Nürnberg). The Bopfingen council was embarrassed and offended by this somewhat aggressively prophetic pamphlet, a true penitential sermon, and decided to forward it to the Nürnberg council for advice and action. Lazarus Spengler, a leading councilman and censor of Nürnberg, called Vogel from Eltersdorf to account for this tract, and warned him not to indulge further in such "liber­ties." Although it dismissed him, the council soon discovered that Vogel was an Anabaptist. Upon examination he admitted having been baptized by Hut and also having baptized others. Since there was as yet no Anabaptist church organization Vogel seems to have acted as an isolated individual. Vogel, under the jurisdiction of the Nürnberg council, was imprisoned and the case reported to Kasimir, Mar­grave of Brandenburg (Bayreuth-Ansbach); but be­fore it could receive an answer it decided to make an example of Vogel. Thus a sham trial was held, complete with torture, and an argument was trumped up that Vogel intended rebellion. On 26 March 1527, he was beheaded without opportu­nity to defend himself. The trial records no longer exist and may have been destroyed to obscure the situation.

The most important aspect of this story (a first in the long epic of Anabaptist persecutions) is the Sendbrief of 1526, which profoundly reflects the spirit of this first decade of both the Reformation and Anabaptism. Wiswedel gives an elaborate sum­mary of its contents (pp. 162-69). Not unlike Haug's Christliche Ordnung of 1524, this Sendbrief is less typically Anabaptist than non-Lutheran. It is a forceful call to repentance ad­dressed to the citizenry of Bopfingen and to authori­ties in general, "kings, princes, and lords." The old theme of "reason and obedience" occupies a central place in his arguments. The cross is inevi­table for those who obey God's Word: like gold in fire so also must man be tried by tribulation and persecution. One can easily understand that the council members of both Bopfingen and Nürnberg were baffled by this letter; they simply interpreted it as a voice of rebellion.

In 1717, two hundred years later, in the days of flowering Pietism , Dr. J. D. Herrnschmidt, professor of theology in Halle, by chance discovered a copy of this Sendbrief, perhaps in the archives of Bopfingen, where he had been a superintendent, and re-edited it in 1717 as a devotional tract for his congregation in Halle. What once had caused mar­tyrdom for its author was now welcomed and ap­plauded, even though there is good reason to assume that the pamphlet was reinterpreted in the mild and rather harmless way of 18th-century Pietism.